Thursday, August 11, 2011

One More Pull On The Handle

SOME PEOPLE play pokies, forever backing losers while hoping their luck will change.

Fairfax journalists are different. They keep investing their credibility in Gillard and hoping she will come good. It has been just plain “bad luck”, according to an Age senior editor, that less savvy types see her for a dill. Not to worry, the latest ructions on international markets will give her “an opportunity to shine”.

The Mythbusters proved that you actually CAN polish a turd, provided you take the appropriate amount of care. Fairfax seem to have done so, and it got their girl over the line last year, but I think the product is now well past its use-by date and the marketing department is having problems of its own.

I think in retrospect I should have seen it coming when I had the opportunity for a dirt-cheap copy of the Age with my Starbucks coffee every day. That was back in 2007, and the sight of the paper being shoved out the door in huge amounts at cheap prices should have been a sign not of healthy circulation but of a desperate attempt to improve it. Hide the decline, indeed!

This attempt to link Fairfax's financial woes to its political viewpoint betrays a real ignorance of commercial reality.

If politics is the problem, how come the right-wing alternative, The Australian, loses so much money? It's a very well resourced paper, employing a large number of extremely capable journalists, and yet despite all the millions poured into it the Oz's circulation remains stuck at about 130,000.

Bunyip, how long do you really think The Age and the SMH would last if they suddenly veered hard right, alienating the inner-city latte sippers who, according to you, make up so much of their audience?